


relax and float downstream

by attheborder



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Carnivale (The Terror), Hand Jobs, M/M, TRPW 2021, Water Sex, the gay soup content you've all been waiting for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 23:27:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29233755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/attheborder/pseuds/attheborder
Summary: Crispe and Hoar, soaking in a pot...For Terror Rarepair Week 2021, prompt: "Carnivale"
Relationships: Samuel Crispe/Edmund Hoar
Comments: 20
Kudos: 22
Collections: The Terror Bingo (2020), The Terror Rarepair Week 2021





	relax and float downstream

**Author's Note:**

> this is also a fill for my Terror Bingo square "Almost Kiss" !

“Room for one more?” 

In the glowing dark, the shape of Samuel Crispe loomed up over the rim of the tub. He was dressed as a very large bumblebee. That is to say, he was dressed as a bumblebee, and as he was rather a large man, so too was the bee. Edmund could not tell if it suited him, really, but it was nice to see that he’d put as much effort into his costume as Edmund himself had: laboring over the frock and wig of a courtly lady all week, adding ribbons and ruffles that probably hardly anyone had taken notice of, drunk as the ship’s companies had already been before they'd even crossed the ice. 

“Uh. Yeah, yeah, course there is,” Edmund said, though he’d been treasuring the quiet ever since Best and the others he’d come with had clambered dripping out of the tub and left him to his solitary soaking. 

He watched Crispe remove his costume, and then his uniform and smallclothes beneath. Crispe had a sizable prick, Edmund couldn’t help but notice. His own stirred weakly in the warm water at the sight. 

Crispe displaced a great deal of the water when he settled in; it splashed over the rim and right onto Edmund’s dress, folded neatly in a pile atop a crate at the tub’s side. Then Kinnaird put down his ladle and headed off to go fetch more ice to melt and pour in, and Edmund was left alone with the AB who he hardly knew, except as a star player on _Terror’s_ football side and as the man Aylmore had once described memorably as “like if you took Mr. Des Voeux, and sort of stretched him up tall and wider.” 

Edmund tried vainly to think of something to say that wasn’t a comment on Crispe’s rugged physique or a very stupid joke about getting stung. Somehow he ended up settling on: “You got knocked out by Lady Silence?” 

Crispe eyed him from beneath his dark brows. “How’d you hear about that,” he said. 

“Mr. Goodsir told me.” It sounded a bit better than the truth of _I was standing by the hatchway doing nothing and overheard Goodsir telling Fitzjames as they arrived._

“Ah. Well,” said Crispe. He stretched out his arms over the rim of the tub; he was sitting close enough to Edmund so that his arm came round Edmund’s back, not quite touching. “She did do. A nasty blow—never knew a girl could hit like that.” 

“You’re—feeling better?” 

Crispe laughed: a kindly sound. “Think so, yeah. This is really helping, I’ll say.” For a moment Edmund thought he meant that talking to him was a balm, but then Crispe stretched languorously in the warm water and submerged himself in full, coming up after a few moments with his dark hair slick and shining. 

The crackle of the fire underneath them was steady; the festive din from outside their little warm cocoon oddly muffled, as if it was just the two of them in a world all their own. Edmund gazed into the violet, gauzy dimness that surrounded them, flexing his fingers and twisting his hands through the water. 

Crispe cleared his throat. “You’re Captain Fitzjames’s steward now, that must be quite the task. Has you curling his hair in the mornings, does he?”

“Oh. I’m—I’m not, actually.” 

Crispe frowned. “But I thought—” He seemed to be doing the math in his head, an equation Edmund had run himself dozens of times in the last six months.

“He’s kept Mr. Bridgens for himself,” Edmund put in, to save Crispe the trouble. “I don’t think I was ever really in the running, to be honest.” 

“Well, if you’re not serving the Captain… what _do_ you do?” 

“Mostly I run messages between the men. And reorganize the pantries. And I take care of Jacko….” Edmund's voice caught on the name. “ _Took_ care,” he corrected. “She, er, died. Just today, actually.” 

“Oh,” said Crispe. “What happened?” 

“Got sick,” Edmund sniffled, feeling pathetic. It was just a monkey. An ugly little monkey who’d shit all over his shirtsleeves with regularity and bitten him more times than he could count, often drawing blood. But it—she—had been not only his responsibility but his companion. He’d made her new dresses to wear, and fed her out of her painted bowl, and listened to her chatter away late into the night…. 

Edmund shook himself. This was Carnivale, it was a celebration—it was no time for morbing, as Fitzjames might say. He felt quite rude, making nice Mr. Crispe sit here and listen to him complain. This was why the others had left him, because he’d been in such a foul mood. “S’alright, though,” he said, sitting up straighter and trying for a winning smile in Crispe’s direction. “I keep myself busy enough, best I can.” 

“I’m sure you’re a perfectly good steward,” said Crispe. “Fitzjames must have had his reasons, keeping Mr. Bridgens on.” 

Of course he did. Captain Fitzjames didn’t do anything without a reason. Reason being in this case, certainly, that Edmund was no great steward. He did not know Fitzjames as well as Bridgens; he was not as intelligent as Bridgens nor as kind, he did not have the older man’s efficiency or conversational skills. He was not even as good at laundry as Bridgens—a thing he had not realized one could really do poorly at, until he’d seen the state of Fitzjames’s impossibly white linens hanging up to dry, right alongside Sir John's sadly yellowed ones.

“ _Terror_ must be getting along well, relieved of all those men,” Edmund said, changing the subject. “Must be quiet as the grave.” 

“Grave indeed,” Crispe said, contemplative, and then sighed. “I love _Terror_ more than any ship I’ve known, Mr. Hoar, but it’s a damn shame what’s happening to her.” Edmund nodded, as if he knew exactly what Crispe was talking about. He did not particularly love _Erebus,_ nor any ship he’d served on. They were not very loveable things. The sea, though—the sea he loved dearly; the sea he had not seen in over a year now. “We’ve not seen Crozier for weeks. They say he’s sick—gastritis.” Crispe shook his head. “Command is living in their own world, if they think a fine party like this will keep us from realizing that ever since Sir John died, they’ve been steering this whole expedition without charts.” 

Edmund was comforted to hear Crispe’s doubts. He too had been harboring doubts of his own, and there was nobody on _Erebus_ to share them with, save for perhaps Private Pilkington, who he did not like much at all. 

He was prepared now for a long conversation in which they discussed very serious things in hushed tones, but then Crispe turned towards him, angling his body on the seat, and said matter-of-factly, “Right, we’ve done the parlor talk, are you going to give me a hand, or shall I start on you first?” 

“I—ah, yes?” said Edmund, surprised at the sudden turn this encounter was taking. He would have been perfectly content to sit here simmering in the warm water with a handsome man by his side the whole night long, but now that the subject had been broached, naturally he would not hold back. His hand dove to meet Crispe’s prick and he couldn’t help but suck in a shocked breath. It had grown hard unseen under the water, and was now even more astonishing in girth than before. 

“There you are, lad,” said Crispe, as Edmund began to frig him with studious intent. It was nice to have something to do. A task that wasn’t just mending or sorting or working on the woolie he’d started for his mother, a picture of _Erebus_ at sea, only he’d used up the last of his blue thread on the sky and had to leave the ocean white as ice. 

He tried not to show his gratefulness too much, while he tugged at Crispe’s prick—would hardly be becoming, to be seen taking too much pleasure in an act like this, but it did feel very nice. Crispe’s hand was all the way round now, gripping Edmund’s shoulder, bringing him in closer so that Edmund’s bowed head rested on his chest.

Edmund was quite proud of the sound he caused Crispe to make when he reached his crisis, a low masculine series of satisfied grunts—proud enough to belay his disappointment at not getting to see or feel the spend itself.

Letting his hand float away, he sat there, politely silent and staring at the blueblack surface of the water, as Crispe recovered. Eventually Crispe gave a cough in Edmund’s direction, and Edmund looked up. “Shall I…?” Crispe said.

“Oh, oh yes, please,” said Edmund, probably a bit too eagerly, but Crispe didn’t seem to mind; he fumbled underwater between Edmund’s legs until Edmund grabbed his hand, and guided it right to its goal. 

He found he couldn’t be much bothered with the unsanitariness of the situation, as Crispe pulled him off with practiced, perfunctory motions. He sank into the sensation, closing his eyes and gripping the rim of the tub. 

It was freeing, to not care. Maybe he would’ve had a happier summer, iced in as they’d been, if he’d not still been trying so hard to be a good steward, despite his lack of official position. 

No one was telling him what to do or where to go anymore. He’d been forgotten about almost completely. And now Jacko was gone too, the last remnant of his owed loyalty to Sir John torn apart by a strange sickness that he’d been helpless to prevent. 

He had been quite scared of Sir John, or more accurately about the prospect of disappointing him, but that at least had been the sort of fear that one could act on, have it improve one’s conduct, straighten one into righteousness.

This new directionless sort of fear, now: fear of the bear, of the encroaching ice, of their dwindling food supplies (no amount of reorganizing the pantry could make more flour magically appear, or more potatoes) was much worse. It was the sort of fear that led straight here: giving into his most sinful of impulses without a second thought. 

With all of this on his mind, Edmund tipped over the edge, spending into the water with Crispe’s strong hand around his prick, and then another pressing on his bare chest—Crispe holding him steady as he shuddered silently through it. 

He looked up into Crispe’s eyes and found they were closer than they expected, the comely crags of Crispe’s face mere inches from Edmund’s—the sweet feeling coursing through his whole body sent him tipping towards it, and Crispe did not move away as he leaned in—

The sound of Kinnaird returning caused Edmund to blink into alertness and then spring away from Crispe, settling a safe and respectable distance from him across the tub. 

As fresh meltwater was ladled in, Crispe stretched luxuriously again, head back against the rim, and Edmund admired his neck, the spread of dark stubble and the jut of his adam’s apple. He was just on the verge of saying something to him— something like, _do you ever feel like you’re on the outside? That important things happen only when you’re not there, and that the whole world has conspired to make sure you never matter?_

Then there was a rustle of canvas at the entrance to the room, and through the gloom Edmund saw three dark figures move inside. A spasm of premonitory worry wracked him. 

Crispe sat up. “Is that the Captain….?” 

**Author's Note:**

> "supposed to be crack but it got sad," the terror rarepair story. thank you to everyone on terrortwt who clamored for gay soup, i hope i have delivered. 
> 
> [twitter](http://twitter.com/areyougonnabe) / [tumblr](http://areyougonnabe.tumblr.com)


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